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The Russian Revolution 



ADDRESS 



OF 



MELVILLE E. STONE 



AT 



THE BROOKLYN CIVIC CLUB 

MAY i. 1917 






By t£»nsf ©r 
gba ahlte House 



Melville E. Stone, General Manager of The Associated 
Press, addressed the members of the Brooklyn Civic Club 
today at their club rooms, 127 Remsen Street, on various 
aspects of the Russian situation. Hans von Kakenborn, 
one of the directors of the Club, introduced Mr. Stone. 

Mr. Stone spoke as follows : 

I am to talk to you on Russia. I am not to deliver 
an "address'^ or "oration'', but to have a little fireside 
talk with you in respect to that country. I am impressed 
that we in this countrv know verv little of Russia, and 
that whaj; little we do know has not been such as to 
create a high estimate of that country. 

There are many reasons for this point of view. First, 
there is no conspicuous, no large Russian colony in this 
country. I think it would be very difficult to gather, 
within the limits of the United States, one hundred in- 
telligent Russians, such as you would find among those 
at present in control of the new government. The people 
who have come over here have very naturally been the 
peasants of Russia and the poor, poverty-stricken Jews. 
They evoke our sympathy and pity. But we find it diffi- 
cult to imagine Russia as an intelligent country, from 
the average specimen of her people that we find in New 
York or in the United States. 

Then, as to our other point of view^ respecting 
Russia: Those who have traveled in Russia and who 
have come back to tell the story, related their trying ex- 
periences and annoyances growing out of the passport 
system. They have told you, if they have told you the 
truth, that they traveled in a country where no one had a 
smile, and they told you of the grief and the suffering 
of that gigantic population. 



Then you have also read George Kennan's story of 
the exiles to the mines and the horrors practiced by the 
Third Section of the Kussian police. Then you have 
heard of pogroms, of the massacre of the .Jews, and you 
have heard of the sodden, drunken peasants, where they 
all drank vodka. 

Now this is all a very dark picture, but unhappily 
it is all a very true picture of the Russia of the past. 
When we consider that the number of newspapers in 
Russia is limited to fifteen hundred or two thousand, 
all under a rigid censorship, all forbidden to express any 
views, we naturally inquire, "How is it possible for such a 
country, occupied by nearly two hundred millions of 
people, of whom only ten per cent, read or write any 
language, to achieve and maintain self-government?" 

That is a perfectly natural inquiry; but it makes no 
account of another side of the picture. Russia, whether 
all I have said is true or not, has another side. For one 
hundred and fifty years, in many of her activities, she 
has been one of the self-governing countries of the world. 
The little farmer who, in Russia, can neither read nor 
write, meets once a year with the other farmers in his 
vicinity or in his village (it is called a "Mir") for de- 
fensive purposes. The villages in Russia are built as 
many of the villages in the old days were. The village 
there is built in the centre, and the farms radiate there- 
from. They meet in this manner, and have so met for 
more than one hundred and fifty years, once a year, to 
transact their own little local business. 

If you will read John Fiske's book on "The American 
Political Ideals and their Origin," you will find that the 
author traces our New England town meeting back to 
the Russian "Mir". It was there that it had its origin. 
It was born in the days of Catherine II. Of course, at 
that time the serfs were not free, and the landlords 



3 



were the masters and they met in these village meetings. 
Then, in 1861, when the serfs were freed and attached 
to the land, they became participants in these meetings. 
Now a great many of these people cannot read or write, 
but they are taught by practice a form of self-government. 

There are some rather interesting and amusing in- 
cidents in connection with these annual meetings of the 
Kussians. For instance, every year they re-allot the 
farms and, curiously enough, the man who grumbles 
is the man who gets the best farm, because he will have 
to pay more taxes and work harder, and he would rather 
have a poor farm and work less and pay less taxes. 

They have a second form of self-government, — they 
hold their municipal elections in the cities. They have 
had municipal elections for years. They also have a 
third form, which is analogous to the county councils 
of England, covering a larger field. These are the 
Zemstvoes, and they are self-governing. And finally, they 
have a fourth form, — the Duma, which was given them 
in 1905 by the Emperor Nicholas. The people have been 
trained through all these activities in self-government. 

You have read, of course, of bomb-throwing in Eussia, 
the work of the Nihilists and of the revolutionaries. But 
underlying all these things, Eussia in the main has been 
a quiet and orderly country. Two things in her history 
that stand out as wonderfully significant are, first, that 
when Alexander freed the serfs (which was a thing of 
great moment, involving as it did, the fortunes of a great 
many men) it was done quietly and calmly; the landlords 
of Eussia participated in it, approved it, and there was 
no excitement and no disturbance. 

Then since this war you have had an illustration of 
the calm character of the Eussian people. By a stroke 
of the pen, vodka disappeared entirely from every table 
in Eussia. I said to a friend of mine, a Colonel of a 



Siberian regiment, who was over here recently, "Was 
there no dissent?" "No," he replied. "Did it depend 
entirely upon the supreme authority of the autocrat of 
the Kussias?" I asked. "No," he said. "We all recognized 
that vodka drinking was a curse. In my own case my 
brother and I had two vodka factories, and when this 
order came we said, ^Well, it means bankruptcy, but it 
is right and we are going to do it; we are not going to 
dissent from the order of His Majesty.' We converted 
our factories into munition factories; we put our people 
at work in them and we have been saved by them. Of 
course we are not making nearly the amount of money 
we did before." 

I do not know whether you read the stories The 
Associated Press had recently on the liberation of the 
Siberian exiles. These despatches were of a very remark- 
able character. One that impressed me very greatly was 
written by Mr. Kobert Crozier Long^ whom I sent from 
Stockholm to Petrograd, and out into Asia, to meet the 
incoming exiles from the mines. You may be interested 
in my calling renewed attention to them, as giving some 
illustration of the Kussian character. 

Out near some point — Irkutsk or Omsk — there was a 
Governor of a prison who heard of the revolution. The 
prisoners didn't hear of it, but the Governor knew it 
was coming. "Well," he said, "I am going to flog them 
once today anyhow so they will enjoy freedom when they 
get it." So he called them in and flogged them, and then 
disappeared. The parish priest told them of the revolu- 
tion and informed them they were all free, and they 
went down to get this man, who had indulged in the 
flogging process in the morning. And they found him, 
and of course they were greatly incensed and they wanted 
to kill him. One of them said, "No — No, we will not do 



it. We will not stain this revolution by murder!" And 
they didn't. 

Now I have very great hope for the future of Russia. 
I first visited Russia something like twenty-five or 
twenty-seven years ago. I have been there frequently 
since. The Russian people are a kindly people. There 
was never any reason in the world for the racial quarrel 
that existed there, except that it was stimulated by the 
bureaucracy. The Kishinev massacre, the Lodz massacre 
and the others were all stimulated by a number of 
Chauvinists, who were acting in conjunction with the 
St. Petersburg bureaucracy. 

That went on and on and on until it finally reached 
a point where no member of the bureaucracy felt that 
he was safe; that these attacks which were made by the 
Third Section of the Czar's police were likely to reach 
him. A man would sit in his apartment or in his home 
in St. Petersburg. There would come a rap on the door. 
A polite young man in citizen's clothing would be intro- 
duced. He would say to this home-staying body "They 
would like to see you down at Police Headquarters. There 
is a carriage downstairs; will you come down?" He 
would put on his hat and coat and go down. He was 
taken to Police Headquarters and then, without trial, 
without any knowledge as to his offense, he found 
himself sent to one of the dungeons in the prison of 
St. Peter and St. Paul on an island in the Neva. 

Well, the next day his family, not knowing, but 
suspecting that something was wrong, took steps to in- 
quire. The man's brother went to the prison and asked 
the keeper if Ivan is there. The keeper said, "Well, who 
are you, that you should inquire?" "I am his brother." 
"Oh, you are." "Yes." "And you want to see your 
brother?" "Yes." "Well the next cell to his is vacant, 
and you shall have it." 



6 

And so he was incarcerated. And those two men were 
sent to Siberia, and unless by some fortuitous circum- 
stance they could get word out, their families, who had 
not the faintest idea of their whereabouts, might never 
know what their fate had been. That condition had 
gone on. Bureaucratic, tyrannous government had be- 
come intolerable for everyone. It had its terrors for 
even the bureaucrats themselves. The lettrcs de cachet 
of Mirabeau's day were harmless compared with the 
diabolism practiced by the Third Section of the Czar's 
police. 

If a man of the bureaucracy for any reason felt he 
would like to see another member of the bureaucracy 
put out of the way — and sometimes for reasons that are 
amazing — he might take the husband of a woman who is 
wanted. If he wanted a fellow bureaucrat put out of the 
way, he would make some charge against this bureaucrat, 
and if he could get the ear of the Third Section, this 
bureaucrat himself would go to Siberia. 

Now they reached a point where the bureaucracy of 
Russia overturned almost all of the decisions of the 
"Mir" and of the municipal elections, and of the 
Zemstvoes, and closed the Duma and reached down with 
such terrible tyranny upon them that they finally, all of 
them, even bureaucrats, were glad to have the revolution. 

I don't think the Emperor was as responsible for 
these conditions as perhaps w^ould appear on the surface. 
I remember a very interesting talk I had with him, in 
which he said, "If they let me live, I will give Russia a 
government modelled after the British Government. My 
mother was an Englishwoman ; my tutor was an English 
clergyman. Don't make any mistake; I know what a 
limited monarchy is. And English is the language of 
our home." (It is the Court language at the Winter 
Palace and Tsarskoe-Selo.) He said, "I do not know 



whether they will let me live or not. My grandfather 
undertook to give them a constitution, but on the veiy 
day he had given it to them, he was assassinated." 

Now that brings me to a point of view in respect to 
Russia that I think is a just one. I know that Dr. 
Andrew D. White has said he thought Nicholas was 
savage in his instinct — a view growing out of a state- 
ment Nicholas made in his presence when Dr. White 
was our Ambassador to Russia. I do not agree with 
him. He is a coward, and small wonder that he is a 
coward. He has lived in the atmosphere of poison and 
of bombs, and he has exemplified the theory that, "all 
cowards are brutes." It is inherent in him; it is a part 
of his nature. That was expressed by Plehve, the Min- 
ister of the Interior. I was talking to him about the 
censorship and he said, "Oh, no, I don't think it can be 
done." "W^ell," I said, "I am sorry I don't agree with 
you. I don't think these repressive measures will work 
out in the end. Of course all government is repressive 
in a measure, but over-repression ends in revolution." 
"Well," he said, "if you drop the lines the horses are 
going to run away." 

Now that is the attitude and has been the attitude 
of the country so far. "If you drop the lines the horses 
would run away." All you had to do to induce the 
Emperor to send a man to Siberia was to say, "Well, 
your children are in danger." "This man is a revolu- 
tionist." "This man will poison your food." "This man 
will throw a bomb and kill you." 

While I think Nicholas honestly wished to give them 
a better government, he countenanced tyranny and bar- 
barism out of his fears, until it became absolutely unen- 
durable. 

The Chairman has called attention to something I 
said at the National Arts Club about our relation with 



8 



(he Eussians. If you will read the authenticated history 
of your own country you will learn that, from the very 
foundation of the Eepublic to his hour, Eussia has been 
our steadfast friend. Not a friend in lavish professions 
— to whisper a tale of devotion to our ear in the moment 
of our triumph only to break faith with us in the moment 
of our trial — but a friend who has ever held out a helping 
hand in every time of need. If you care to learn the 
story you will find it in the diary of John Quincy Adams, 
in Thiers' ^ ^History of the Consulate and Empire" of 
Bonaparte; in the letters and reports of Bayard Taylor 
and Cassius M. Clay, and every minister and every am- 
bassador and every charge of this country at St. Peters- 
burg. It was not the unbroken squares of Wellington 
under the shadow of Mont St. Jean that sealed Napoleon's 
doom, it was the friendship of Alexander, the Czar of Eus- 
sia, for the Americans, four years earlier. There was an 
hour when an American President — Madison — had but 
one minister at any court of Europe and that minister 
was at St. Petersburg. And that minister was John 
Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent." Eussia and 
France were in close alliance as the result of the 
famous treaty on the raft at Tilsit. The Berlin and 
Milan decrees had been issued forbidding commerce with 
Britain by any of the continental powers which were 
under Napoleon's thumb. By direction of the French 
Emperor, American ships were classed with British ships, 
because we had refused to obey liis command that we 
make war on Great Britain. Adams was sent as minister 
to Eussia. On his way, pursuant to Bonaparte's decree, 
he found fifty American merchantmen held by order 
of the French Emperor, for trial by a Danish prize court 
at Copenhagen. He stopped and protested, but in vain. 
He pushed on to St. Petersburg; he begged Eussia to in- 
tervene. Eussia was committed by her alliance with 



France to the Berlin and Milan decrees. The Russian 
Minister of Foreign Affairs declined the demand of 
Adams. Then Adams went to Alexander, the Russian 
Emperor, and the Czar struck the blow which toppled 
the mighty Corsican from his throne and finally sent 
him to St. Helena. Overruling his minister, he not 
only compelled the release of the impounded Ameii- 
can ships at Copenhagen, but defying his French allies 
he opened all of the Russian ports to American commerce. 
And later, through his influence, he induced Sweden, 
under John Bernadotte, to join in defying the Milan de- 
crees and to allow American vessels to enter the ports 
of Sweden; and because of this^ — because of this act — 
the alliance between France and Russia was broken, and 
Russia and SAveden joined with England in marching on 
to Waterloo and to Paris. Criticizing his Imperial Mas- 
ter on that occasion, the Russian Minister of Foreign 
Affairs said to Mr. Adams, "Our friendship for America 
is obstinate, more obstinate than you know." It was so 
obstinate that for it Alexander broke with Napoleon and 
remade the map of Europe. 

But, two years after Waterloo, and while Russia was 
fresh in her alliance with Britain, she gave us another 
signal evidence of her friendship for the United States. 
We quarreled with England over the construction of the 
treaty of Ghent, and the matter was submitted to Alex- 
ander, the same Russian Emperor as arbiter, and he de- 
cided in our favor. But still later, when we were in the 
throes of the Civil War another Alexander, another Czar 
of the Russians, sent two fleets, not one, to New York and 
San Francisco, to testify that there was one civilized 
power of Europe who was our friend. 

I know that doubt has been cast upon the statement 
that these fleets were under sealed orders to report to 
President Lincoln in case England and France under- 



10 



took to intervene^ and although there is much evidence 
that such was the fact (indeed, Minister Lothrop, who 
AA^as our minister there, left testimony that he himself 
had seen the sealed orders) — although there is much 
evidence to sustain that statement I do not care to assert 
it. What is of still greater importance and significance, 
and what cannot be challenged, is a letter from Bayard 
Taylor to Secretary Seward written in the hour of our 
sorest peril and detailing an audience with Gortschakoff, 
the Eussian Minister of Foreign Affairs: ^^Eussia alone 
has stood by you from the first and will continue to stand 
by you," said Prince Gortschakoff to Mr. Taylor. "Pro- 
posals will be made to Eussia to join in some plan of 
interference. She will refuse any invitation of the kind. 
Eussia will occupy the same ground as at the beginning 
of the struggle. You may rely upon it. She will not 
change.'' Turn to the diplomatic papers of the Govern- 
ment for 1862 and read that letter and imagine what it 
meant to the agonized soul of Lincoln. I am sure it is 
not too much to say that but for Eussia' s firm attitude 
of friendship there would have been an intervention and 
probably the resultant disruption of this Union. 

Such, gentlemen, is our obligation to Eussia. 

We are engaged in a great world struggle for 
democracy. You have had the most wonderful illustration 
in Eussia of a people rising in its might. As I said the 
other night I firmly believe that if all the blood that has 
been spilled and all the wealth that has been spent in 
this war results only in a free Eussia, it will have been 
well worth all it has cost humanity. 



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